Telco gets offers from three African countries to set up truck assembly plants

Bonanza For AmethiPublic sector undertakings are vying with one another to shower projects on Amethi, Sanjay Gandhi's old constituency. At least three undertakings have lined up projects for what is one of the most backward areas in Uttar Pradesh but Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) is likely to beat them to the post with two, not one, units costing about Rs 15 crore.

One project will make energy meters and cost around Rs 3 crore. The other project, worth about Rs 12 crore, will make high tension ceramic insulators. The projects are expected to be located at Sultanpur where an industrial estate is coming up, and will employ 3,500 people.

Tata In AmericaTata Engineering and Locomotive Company (Telco), the largest private sector company in India, has had offers from three African countries Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia, to set up truck assembly plants. Telco has also been invited to set up similar plants in Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka but African projects are receiving a priority at Bombay House.

The projects will be more or less on the same lines as Telco's project in Malaysia which assembles about 1,200 vehicles a year, enough to give the company more than a quarter of the market share.

In Africa, the prospects are said to be so good that Telco is likely to go in for equity participation to the extent of 25 per cent. Telco's exports are expected to touch Rs 60 crore and may exceed Rs 100 crore when the new assembly plants abroad come on stream.

Tea, Detergent And DigestWhat is the difference between soap and a magazine? For a marketing man - none. Both are products to be marketed for a profit. From next month Reader's Digest, the world's largest circulating publication (around 30 million copies in 15 languages) which is famous for its homely self-improvement articles, will peddle its special brand of journalism in Hindi.

The first Hindi edition of 200,000 copies, christened Sarvottam (meaning 'the best'), will be launched by handing out free copies to northern Indian buyers of Surf, the Hindustan Lever detergent. The second issue (print run: 250,000) will find its way to the consumers of Brooke-Bond's Red Label tea. And after miles of washed clothes and endless cups of tea. the Digest hopes to stabilise the paid circulation at around 100,000.

A Gain For West Germany?The West Germans are one up on the British - at the latest count - regarding the Rs 2,500-crore Paradip steel project which seems to have attracted the most intense lobbying since the Bechtel offer of fertiliser plants in the '60s.

The Germans have been able to get a former Orissa-based steel minister and a London-based businessman close to the prime minister on their side - but the British are not far behind.

A special emissary of the British Government flew into New Delhi last month with letters for Indira Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee from a person described as a "high dignitary" in Whitehall.

A Slipping StateHaldia or no Haldia, West Bengal, once the country's No. industrial state, has slipped to No. 3 place, according to the Annual Survey of Industries for 1977-78, released last fortnight.

The state has slipped in all respects - number of factories, gross output, productive capital and wages. It has been overtaken by Gujarat which is now No. 2 state, and, of course, Maharashtra which has been No. 1 for a long time and is far ahead of the next two states down the line.

Tamil Nadu finished a close fourth behind West Bengal but the way it is surging forward, it looks as if it will soon sweep past West Bengal to the third position.

Maharashtra has kept its lead as the most industrialised state in the country with 15 percent of the total factories (13,075) and nearly a quarter of the gross output (Rs 9,334 crore). The gross output of Gujarat factories was less than half of Maharashtra's (Rs 4,222 crore), and only a few hundred more than that of West Bengal (Rs 4,078 crore).

What is surprising is that West Bengal has more workers than Gujarat, 935,000 against 637,000, but labour effiiciency of West Bengal's labour is so low - possibly due to lack of modernisation - that the state accounts for only a ninth of the country's total gross output of around Rs 36,000 crore, while Gujarat, with only two-thirds of West Bengal's labour, is responsible for almost the same proportion.

West Bengal's Hopes BeliedThe Rs 450-crore petrochemical project at Haldia on which the West Bengal Government had set its heart is likely to be dropped in favour of either Karnataka or Maharashtra, according to the grapevine in the Petroleum Ministry. The most likely location is Mangalore which is going to be the site of the next oil refinery on the west coast.

For some reason, the Centre has always felt that Haldia was a wrong location for a naphtha cracker, and ministry officials say that the reluctance of foreign companies to come forward with offers of collaboration - although the West Bengal Government says it is flooded with offers - bears them out.

The Centre says that not a single public sector project in West Bengal is paying its way and Haldia may not be an exception. It has also expressed its reservations on the "quality" of the project report commissioned by the state Government.

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